After having been very busy with the Ironman European Championship in Frankfurt last week, I finally found some time to skim through my “Trends in Immunology”. I read this well reputed journal since many many years, and I observe since many years how reductionst biology and immunology respectively drift towards complexity science. For almost one decade I was searching for the seeds of change in immunology to support our biestmilch thought concept. I had really to scratch the surface to find those scientific groups being courageous enough to publicize against the main stream. The review article I found today really encourages me. Finally it seems that the most obvious to me – that biology needs to deal with complexity – reaches mainstream science and hopefully is going to help us in our work.
Let me quote on a short paragraph from the article in Trends in Immunology: “Immunity is not simply a product of discrete linear signalling pathways; rather it is comprised of a complex set of integrated responses arising from a dynamic network of thousands of molecules subject to multiple influences. Its behavior cannot be explained or predicted solely by examining its components. Systems biology represents a powerful and comprehensive paradigm for biology that stands in contrast to the reductionist approach that has tended to dominate. The systems biology approach regards a system as more as the sum of its parts – its behavior arises not from simply the presence of its building blocks but through the complex relationships among them. Systems display emergent properties.”
The same applies to biestmilch, and our positioning of the substance refers to these premises.
Source: Gardy GL, Lynn DJ, Brinkman FSL and Hancock REW: Enabling a systems biology approach to immunology: focus on innate immunity, Trends in Immunology, 30: 249-262,2009
Finally :-)))